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Slavery forms one of the main themes that has been frequently debated since Huck Finn was first published. Twain himself was vehemently anti-slavery; Huckleberry Finn can in many ways be seen as an allegory for why slavery is wrong. Twain uses Jim, a slave who is one of the main characters, as a way of showing the human side of a slave. Everything about Jim is presented through emotions: Jim runs away because Miss Watson was going to sell him South and separate him from his family; Jim is trying to become free so he can buy his family's freedom; Jim takes care of Huck and protects him on their journey downriver in a very maternalistic manner. Thus, Twain's purpose is to make the reader feel sympathy for Jim and outrage against the society that would harm him. However, at the same time that Twain is attacking slavery, he also pushes the issue into the background for most of the novel. Thus, slavery itself is never debated by Huck and Jim. Even the other slaves in the novel are noticeably minor characters. Only at the very end does Twain create the central conflict concerning slavery: should Huck free Jim from slavery and therefore be condemned to go to hell? This moment is life-altering for Huck because it forces him to reject everything that "civilization" has taught him; he makes the decision to free Jim based solely on his own experiences and not based on the what he has been taught from books.

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